Vancouver Canucks - Improve or Regress?

[Garbageyuk]

I don’t see how they get past EDM:

Forwards: EDM
Defense: even
Goaltending: slight advantage VAN
Depth: EDM

As the Oilers showed against them in the playoffs, all you have to do is wear down Hughes and the Canucks are cooked. They lack the depth and muscle to insulate Hughes from teams just constantly running him. Thats the problem when your best D and player is 5’10” and 180 lbs.

 

[PettersonHughes]

Team was very good last year. Have great pieces everywhere. I think they regressed on D. Forwards seem more balanced for sure.

After the 11 game mark and hot streak, they scored about 3 more goals than CGY the rest of the year.

Automatic playoff team IMO.

"Regressed on D", how? If you're referring to
Zadorov, his stat line was 5-9-14, +6, 17:04 TOI.
Cole, his stat line was 2-9-11, +10, 18:41 TOI,

at least Cole's production has been replaced by Desharnais (1-10-11, +3, 15:44 TOI). Maybe not in full but Carson Soucy only played 40 games but was 2-4-6, +10, 17:29 TOI) so he would've projected to have around Zadorov's role covered in an 82 game season. Forbort is also no slouch, albeit only putting up 0-4-4 and +8 in 35 games. In short, if Soucy chips in with smart passes and safe plays with physicality I don't think the defense misses Zaddy going to get milk and never coming back all that much.

 

[LemonSauceD]

I don’t see how they get past EDM:

Forwards: EDM
Defense: even
Goaltending: slight advantage VAN
Depth: EDM

As the Oilers showed against them in the playoffs, all you have to do is wear down Hughes and the Canucks are cooked. They lack the depth and muscle to insulate Hughes from teams just constantly running him. Thats the problem when your best D and player is 5’10” and 180 lbs.

Canucks have much better depth than the Oilers.

Joshua, Garland, Heinen, Blueger, Sherwood, Suter, Hoglander > Holloway, Henrique, Perry, Ryan, Janmark, Brown, broken down Kane

Having a 39, 37, 35, and 33 year old in your bottom 6 that can hardly skate is definitely not much better depth. Especially since players that old can seemingly fall off a cliff quite rapidly.

 

[Wry n Ginger]

Some very shallow responses in here from fans that don't understand what coaching, team structure and pre-season training performance level setting looks like now for the current iteration of the Tocch/Sedins lead Canucks.

I will go over a few...

Last season the Canucks training staff laid down the law with what the 'new' standards were for showing up for training camp. Most were in the the prerequisite condition but there were a couple that were not. Garland and a few others went after Joshua pretty hard to make sure he knew what he needed to work on.

This past season showed a DEFINITE proof of concept for the Canucks D working with Foote and Gonch on a regular. The entire D cire played more withn their game and was steady as hell.

The new additions on the roster are going to add a ton of value

 

[strattonius]

what lazy analysis

heinen and mikheyev at 5v5 were basically identical production wise (14 goals and 31 points for heinen vs 11 goals and 30 points for mikheyev) last year in similar minutes (heinen 935 minutes vs mikheyev 946 minutes). neither of them really saw power play time regularly

debrusk vs kuzmenko/lindholm was tilted towards debrusk (13 goals and 25 points for debrusk vs 7 goals and 20 points for kuzmenko and lindholm) but that was with lindholm being utterly terrible for vancouver in the regular season (2 goals and 4 assists) and with debrusk playing nearly 25% more minutes than kuzmenko/lindholm played in vancouver combined (1015 vs 776). debrusk is a worse power play performer than either kuzmenko or lindholm but he presumably won't get much time on the power play in vancouver anyways

(also lindholm is a center and debrusk is not, so there's that)

sherwood and lafferty is close but sherwood had the better season so there's a slight edge there even though they both played 4th line minutes

as for sprong yeah he's a good offensive player but he's a terrible defensive player and if he gets ice time it's going to be at the expense of heinen, sherwood or possibly hoglander. he's definitely more productive than someone like di giuseppe but even if you give the minutes di giuseppe played with miller and boeser to sprong you still need to come up with another ~500 minutes for him to get the same opportunity he got in detroit

The poster I replied to said the Canucks replaced Lindholm and Kuzmenko with Debrusk. Speaking of lazy analysis...

You're calling me out for my analysis and I'm just showing all the offseason adds that are getting overlooked. We have more production coming IN than going OUT - and that's with Kuzmenko's Calgary stats where he got all his points.

 

[HockeyWooot]

I think the forward changes can be thought of in the following context.

Heinen at 2.2 vs Mikheyev at 4.75m
Debrusk at 5.5m vs Lindholm 7.75m
Sherwood at 1.5m vs Lafferty at 2.0m
Sprong at 0.975m vs Kuzmenko at 5.5m

Success in becoming more cap efficient while picking up players that can help the team.

Heinen is an effective replacement for Mikheyev at significantly less. Sherwood was a thorn in the Canuck side in the playoffs, the team is keen to add his energy, physicality and depth scoring while replacing Lafferty.

Debrusk is a winger not a centre so not an exact comparison to Lindholm. He is though a higher profile, higher priced signing like Lindholm. Getting a younger player with upside at a lower AAV is a good pickup.

Obviously Sprong isn’t Kuzmenko, but on a Tocchet coached team where the appetite for weak defensve play is low I’d rather have a league minimum player in Sprong periodically getting benched rather than a 5.5m player in Kuzmenko.

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

are soucy and myers (at 3m per) better value than girard and manson? yeah probably

are they a better pairing? absolutely not

i'm not gonna go through every team in the league but off the top of my head the only teams who might have worse bottom 4 defenses are anaheim (but that could change if mintyukov/lacombe/luneau/zellweger improve enough to supplant fowler and gudas), calgary (who aren't even trying and are still probably better), columbus (but only because they're still playing provorov and gudbranson for some reason), dallas (who have harley in their bottom 4 but also some real trash) and montreal (but see anaheim)

soucy looked good to start the season but i don't think it's a coincidence that his play fell off when the teams shooting percentage came back to earth and they stopped winning every game in a blowout. he looked downright bad in the playoffs when the intensity stepped up. i think he's a pretty great 5th dman but someone who gets exposed when forced to play higher leverage minutes. same story for myers. he looks fine when he's playing short minutes and isn't asked to do too much but as soon as he needs to perform he wilts

I posit there are probably more than 15 teams with a worse bottom four. Possibly more.

And saying 'his play fell off when the shooting percentage dropped and that's not a coincidence' is the sort of analysis that comes from looking at box car stats instead of watching.
He became less mobile and trusted his reads less and was getting beat in ways he wasn't before.
No part of why he looked so good was because his forwards were scoring on a higher percentage of shots, unless you think he's a pp quarterback type and...surely you don't think that, right?

 

[Ace of Hades]

Canucks have much better depth than the Oilers.

Joshua, Garland, Heinen, Blueger, Sherwood, Suter, Hoglander > Holloway, Henrique, Perry, Ryan, Janmark, Brown, broken down Kane

Having a 39, 37, 35, and 33 year old in your bottom 6 that can hardly skate is definitely not much better depth. Especially since players that old can seemingly fall off a cliff quite rapidly.

Not to mention the Canucks have a massive edge in goaltending, plus higher top end D.

 

[Soundwave]

Not to mention the Canucks have a massive edge in goaltending, plus higher top end D.

Hughes got outplayed by Bouchard when it mattered, Bouchard dominated that series, Canucks had no answer for him. Ekholm is also defensively IMO better than anyone on the Canucks, one of the most underrated D in the game. Their numbers in that series speak for themselves.

 

[Chet Manley]

Looks like Canucks' fans wait for everyone to go to bed to talk about how good the team is without pushback. You've got a few more hours.

 

[Reality Czech]

They'll have a worse regular season but potentially set up for a longer playoff run. That's generally what happens after a team has such a great regular season like they did last year.

 

[SillyRabbit]

The lineup is slightly worse, and they were really lucky last year. It’s hard to imagine they don’t regress, but they’ll still be a solid team

This is my sentiment as well.

A lot went well for the Canucks last year.

They're still a good team but it's hard to see them entering the playoffs with home ice.

It also really depends on what version of Pettersson shows up in October.

 

[Minnesota Knudsens]

Think they’ll regress, but the Pacific is so bad that they’ll get a playoff spot and most likely a divisional one. I don’t like their offence so much. Seems like a one line team (EP, Boeser, Miller) and when they split those guys up they struggle. Still think they do better than the dumpster fire Kings. My guess is they finish behind the Oilers and compete for home ice with Vegas.

 

[credulous]

The poster I replied to said the Canucks replaced Lindholm and Kuzmenko with Debrusk. Speaking of lazy analysis...

You're calling me out for my analysis and I'm just showing all the offseason adds that are getting overlooked. We have more production coming IN than going OUT - and that's with Kuzmenko's Calgary stats where he got all his points.

do you not understand why comparing ~4000 minutes worth of production (in) to ~2100 minutes worth of production (out) is pointless?

I think the forward changes can be thought of in the following context.

Heinen at 2.2 vs Mikheyev at 4.75m
Debrusk at 5.5m vs Lindholm 7.75m
Sherwood at 1.5m vs Lafferty at 2.0m
Sprong at 0.975m vs Kuzmenko at 5.5m

Success in becoming more cap efficient while picking up players that can help the team.

no one is saying the canucks offseason was poor or their signings were bad. it's just not obvious they're a deeper, better team up front than the lineup they iced in the playoffs

lindholm was relatively poor for vancouver but is a much better player than anyone they brought in and heinen/debrusk/sherwood are all good players but represent marginal upgrades on what they already had not the kind of massive improvement some posters here are claiming

 

[TruePowerSlave]

Should be a playoff team, but I expect some regression. The defense looks kinda weak, Demko has to bail them out.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

they'll regress a bit IMO simply cause there's no way 4 of the top 11 players in shooting % land on the same team
but with the Pacific being weak, they'll finish in the top 3 easily

I'm just glad Lindholm left, he's an Oiler killer

 

[Toby91ca]

On paper they’re better up front

The big problem for me, while the new pieces seem to be modest upgrades over the pieces they lost, of their top 8 forwards from last year, 5 had career years and the other 3 had close to career years (2nd best). That's a good thing of course, but to expect career years again by all of them is pushing it and probability goes against it.

 

[Lunatik]

What I see is a team is a team that had 4 of their top 5 scorers have career highs. And of the following 6 top scorers, they were all no fewer than 5 points under their career best. There will be some regression to the mean. It very much reminds me of the Flames 2018-19 season.

One thing they do have going for them is Demko is an elite goaltender and I think Silovs will be better than DeSmith was last year.

 

[dalewood12]

Rutherford is due for a Cup. I think the Canucks will be very formidable .

 

[Regal]

The big problem for me, while the new pieces seem to be modest upgrades over the pieces they lost, of their top 8 forwards from last year, 5 had career years and the other 3 had close to career years (2nd best). That's a good thing of course, but to expect career years again by all of them is pushing it and probability goes against it.

For sure, that’s why I specifically said on paper. I think it’s marginally better there but there was a lot that went right last year so we’ll see how it plays out. I expect Miller and Boeser to score a bit less. Pettersson hopefully can be closer to 22-23 and/or more consistent, but we’ll see. At the same time, Mikheyev went like 60 games while scoring 1 goal and the PP was pretty bad after the trade deadline, so there’s some room for gaps to get filled in. If they struggle to score like they did after the all star break, they’ll be a bubble team, but I think they can be somewhere in between that and the early season high scoring.

 

[Letsdothis]

That whole fanbase of the lucky PDOkings 'bout to be hit with

Introduction to Statistics​

 

[bringbacktheskate604]

they'll regress a bit IMO simply cause there's no way 4 of the top 11 players in shooting % land on the same team
but with the Pacific being weak, they'll finish in the top 3 easily

I'm just glad Lindholm left, he's an Oiler killer

The reason I don't think they regress is while I expect some of the same guys to maintain an above average shooting% like Brock and JT because that's just a combo of their style and team system. Joshua won't shoot as high and likely maxes out at 20- if he stays healthy, maybe a few more but not gonna count on it.
That's ok tho because not even counting Sprong we added 40+ goals with Jake. Danton and Sherwood replacing Mikheyev, Lafferty and PDG. Also with those three players it's not a stretch to think Jake has a career season next to EP. Danton had 17 in a bottom six role but if he ends up next to JT and Brock replacing Suter or even with EP it's not crazy to think he could get 25. Sherwood has untapped potential and playing with Suter and possibly Hoglander or Podz, gives him a level of linemates that are definitely an offensive upgrade. Obviously there's no guarantee any of them improve their numbers but even if they just match their 2023-2024 numbers, it's still a huge difference and adding 40+ goals mitigates any potential down season from last year's guys.

Now the real wildcard is Sprong. Doing a deep dive on him showed me that on previous teams that were better defensively than the wings and kraken his defense is passable. Now I did preface this as a wildcard scenario but if Tochett can work his magic and I'll use Hoglander as an example who he turned into someone that was able to completely turn his play away from the puck to the point he was a mainstay in the top six and like Hoglander can stick next to EP and Jake, there's no telling just how much he could pop off.

I also think our pp1 is better with Jake and PP2 with Sprong and a few other options now should also be better.

Looking around the division and conference, not seeing any of the top teams potentially improving the roster, depth wise and plugging biggest holes ( winger for EP and massively improving the PK ) while I like the D moves, and wasn't a big fan of Zadorov, especially with that contract for a bottom pairing D and think Vinny and Forbort at worse equal him and Cole, we also have upwards of 3.5 million with Poolmans LTIR and waiving a dman, to use to upgrade at anytime during the season the D cor. An option other teams at the cap won't have and bring in a dman that makes as much as 7 million and at that cap hit would obviously be a significant add.

Who that could be I have no idea but nobody saw Hronek being available.

Sorry guys for the long ass post but if I'm gonna make proclamations, I think explaining why is prudent. Cheers

 

[Beukeboom Fan]

Canucks didn’t have demko, no boeser for game 7 and an injury that was easily plaguing EP and they got within a goal to force overtime to go to the conf final. They will be in the mix again if they can be healthy

Agree on the health issues being major. I just have visions of the Sens when they barely lost to the Pens in 2016 and thought that they were "right there". I think the Canucks are a better team than that OTT squad, but they certainly had a lot go right for them last year. The Canucks also have a solid core identified - and given the relative weakness of the Pacific I'd be shocked if they didn't make the P/O's.

 

[OgeeOgelthorpe]

If Demko stays healthy I think that Vancouver finishes a top 3 team in the pacific.
If Boeser is back to full health and DeBrusk provides 50+ points from the second line then I think the team could improve and potentially take the division.

I don't think they got worse drastically on defense. Zadorov was playing 3rd pair minutes. Sure, they're going to miss his physicality in the playoffs but I don't think he was truly that important to the Canucks in the regular season. Forbert should be able to fill that #5/6 spot fine.

Where I think the Canucks are weakest on their roster is 3C. It's a position where their lack of depth will sting and might cost them some matchups. If they can improve that via trade then Vancouver should be pretty steady and could win games against any team in the league.

 

[strattonius]

do you not understand why comparing ~4000 minutes worth of production (in) to ~2100 minutes worth of production (out) is pointless?

The hell are you talking about? I included every game in Calgary for Lindholm and Kuzmenko.

Fact: the Canucks added +18goals on offense this season.
It's a more versatile group and overall there will be more production.

No idea why you're on such a bender to downplay the Canucks offense. You want to criticize their D or health of Demko I'm all ears; but chopping their offense makes no sense the group is very clearly in a better spot going in to the season.